AUSTRALIA
One result of the prolonged isolation of Australia was that the natives were entirely cut off from the main stream of human progress. So the early settlers found in possession aboriginals who were, physically, in a very primitive condition, and they formed, accordingly, a very low opinion of these natives. To quote Dampier once more, they seemed “the miserablest people of the world.” Greater knowledge and a wider sympathy have caused us to revise that hasty and superficial judgment. The aboriginal had certainly adapted himself to his surroundings in a manner that revealed some intelligence, and his store of myth and legend shows him to be possessed of a tradition and civilization of his own. His mode of life was based upon hunting, and hunters the aboriginals have remained, for they date from a time when nobody ever thought of securing food-supplies either by domesticating animals or by growing crops.
AUSTRALIA’S ISOLATION
The early isolation of Australia affected not only the natives, but also the plants and animals. The continent, thus cut off, developed a specific dry-climate flora of its own, which in time spread from the dry and barren west over all but the coastal regions of the tropical north. There are the acacias, or ‘wattles,’ which have since been introduced very successfully into South Africa. Some of these furnish a bark which is valuable for tanning. There are also the eucalyptus-trees, or ‘gums,’ which vary from dwarfs to giants, rivalling the sequoias of California. Certain trees,, like the jarrah, karri, and ironbarks, produce hard woods that are invaluable for furniture, parquetry, and constructional work. Native grasses, like the kangaroo grass, are excellent for pasture, and the saltbush provides abundant fodder in times of drought. On the other hand, the spinifex, which covers so much of the inland desert regions, is too tough a morsel even for the hard-mouthed camel.
The primitive animals of Australia also show peculiarities due to their isolation. We are all familiar with the strange animal called the kangaroo. It belongs to the family of the marsupials—i.e., to the animals which have a pouch in which they carry their young. The marsupials originally came from America, where only two varieties—the opossum and the yapook—remain, but Australia has a considerable number of them.
Another prehistoric remnant is found in the so-called monotremata, the lowest sub-class of the mammals, consisting of creatures that have but a single outlet for all the excretory channels of the body. The best-known among these is the grotesque Ornithorhynchus, or duck-billed platypus, a brownish creature some twenty inches long, with short fur and the bill of a duck (which in the young has even got teeth) and web feet with long nails and a poisonous horny spur on the heels of the males. This animal, which lays eggs and yet suckles its young like a mammal, is a walking museum of everything that Nature has invented or discarded during the millions of years of her evolutions forward and backward. Another creature of this class is the echidna, or spiny ant-eater, which has five clawed toes on each foot and a long, slender snout like a beak.
As for the rest of the Australian fauna, it contains a most formidable museum of animal curiosities: birds with feathers that are formed like hair; birds that can only walk and are unable to fly; birds that have a strange gurgling note resembling a laugh; cuckoo birds which look like pheasants, and pigeons as large as chickens; rats with web feet, and rats with tails that enable them to climb trees; lizards able to walk on two legs; fishes with gills and lungs dating back to the days of the ichthyosaurus, which are really a mixture of fish and amphibian; wild dogs that resemble both a jackal and a wolf, and may be the descendants of pariah dogs imported into Australia by some of the earliest immigrants from the Asiatic mainland; and a whole menagerie of other peculiarities.
But that is not all. Australia also has an assortment of insects of its own, including the well-known termites, or white ants, which have an inordinate appetite for wood, and destroy not only trees and plants, but furniture, fences, and houses. There are mosquitoes, too, but these fortunately do not carry yellow fever or malaria. The bees have no sting, and some of the ants both bite and sting.
The worst plague, however, is not of Australian origin at all, but an import from Europe. I refer to Brer Rabbit, a harmless enough creature in his usual haunts, but a terrific nuisance among the sandy wastes of a continent where the creatures can breed ad libitum. The first rabbits were introduced from England in 1862 for the purpose of a little sport. The colonists were bored. Hunting rabbits would be a pleasant diversion to break the monotony of life in the bush. A few of these rabbits escaped, and they set up housekeeping in the well-known rabbit fashion. Astronomers, accustomed to deal with large figures, have tried to compute the number of rabbits that must be at large at the present moment in Australia. They have come to the conclusion that there must be almost 4,000,000,000 of them, and it is said that if the rabbits could be exterminated Australia would be able to increase its live stock by 25 per cent. Entire regions have been devastated by these rodents. An effort was made to save Western Australia from the invasion of rabbits from the cast by erecting a rabbit-proof fence of chicken-wire over three feet high and three feet below the ground, to prevent the vermin from digging underneath. But it was too late: the rabbits were there already. Poison, was then tried, but also in vain. The wild animals which regulate the rabbit supply in the rest of the world were not to be found in Australia, or refused to adapt themselves to this strange land, and died as soon as they were imported. And in spite of all the white man has done the rabbits continue to multiply as merrily as the sparrow, another European importation which is now the dread of all garden-lovers, and as rapidly as the prickly pear, which has taken to the sandy Australian soil as a seal takes to water.
HOW JAPAN WAS MADE
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
Nevertheless, and in spite of these terrific handicaps, the immigrants have succeeded in making Australia the most important wool-growing country of the world. To-day Australia, with over 100,000,000 sheep, looks after one-quarter of all the wool we wear, and wool accounts for fully two-fifths of the country’s exports.
AUSTRALIA IS FOUND
As the Australian mainland is the oldest land in the world, it is self-evident that it must contain a great variety of minerals. The gold rush of the early fifties drew attention to the Australian goldfields. Since then lead, copper, tin, iron, and coal have also been mined, but oil has not yet been found. Diamonds occur, but they are rare. Precious and semi-precious stones, on the other hand, such as sapphires and opals, occur in large quantities. Lack of capital and adequate transport have prevented a thorough exploitation of these treasures, but that will come when Australia has recovered from the years of financial stress through which, like all other nations of the world, she has been passing. Then she will be able to take advantage of her vast stores of hidden treasures.
Meanwhile Australia enjoys the distinction of having been, next to Africa, the most difficult continent to explore. By the beginning of the nineteenth century her three main divisions were fairly well understood. There was the tableland of the west, which had an average altitude of 2000 feet, although in some spots it rose as high as 4000 feet. This tableland was also the gold land of the west, but it had no harbours and only one city of any importance, Perth. Then there were the eastern highlands, very ancient mountain-ranges, which rain and wind had gradually worn away, until the highest peak, Mount Kosciusco, was only 7328 feet above sea-level. This was the part of the continent with, good harbours, and therefore it attracted the first colonists.
Between these two elevated plateaux lay a wide plain which never rose above 600 feet, and which, in the region of Lake Eyre, actually sank below sea-level. This plain was cut in halves by two mountain-ranges, the Flinders range and the Grey range, which latter connected in the north with the mountains of Queensland.
THE PEARL DIVER
The first immigrants were people who, according to the laws of England in the latter half of the eighteenth century, were considered ‘criminals,’ but who often were guilty of no wo
rse crime than that poverty or misery which drives men and women to commit some petty offence such as the theft of a loaf of bread or a few apples. The intention was to form the first penal settlement on the shores of Botany Bay, so called because the naturalist who accompanied Captain Cook found a large number of new botanical specimens there. Actually, however, it was formed at Port Jackson, farther north. The colony itself was called New South Wales, and Sydney was the capital. The island of Tasmania, then part of New South Wales, was converted into a penal station in 1803, and the convicts were gathered together in the neighbourhood of the present city of Hobart. In 1825 the city of Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, was founded. During the thirties a settlement at the head of the bay called Port Phillip was named after Lord Melbourne, and it became the capital of the province of Victoria. Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, dates back to the same period, but Perth, the capital of Western Australia, remained an insignificant village until the days of the great western gold rush of the nineties. As for the northern territory, administered by the Commonwealth, although it has an area of half a million square miles, it has only 5000 inhabitants, of whom less than 2000 live in Port Darwin, on the Timor Sea, one of the finest natural harbours in the world, but without a vestige of trade.
In 1901 these six states, with 6,000,000 inhabitants, of whom three-quarters lived in the east, formed the Commonwealth of Australia, and seven years later they decided to build themselves a new capital called Canberra, situated 200 miles south-west of Sydney and not far away from Mount Kosciusco, the highest mountain of Australia.
In 1927 the Dominion took possession of its new headquarters, and this has coincided with a time of great stress and difficulty. The development of the country has been a costly affair, and it may be that those responsible for the government of Australia were trying to go too fast. All the countries of the world were feeling the financial strain very severely, and it is not a matter for surprise that a new country like Australia should have found it difficult to weather the storm. In 1931 the Commonwealth was no longer able to get the credit to enable it to carry on its work, and drastic measures became necessary. These were taken heroically, and signs are not wanting to show that the worst of the storm has passed.
Australia is very thinly populated, and this does not lessen its problems. Tasmania and New South Wales have eight people to the square mile. Victoria has twenty. But Queensland and South Australia have only one, and Western Australia only one-half per square mile. Who is to carry on the work of developing this great land and of exploiting its vast resources? The question is not easy to answer, for though Australia needs men sorely she wants only those who will be able to do the work required of them, and will enable the Government to build up a solid and enduring state. Newcomers often prefer the amenities of the towns to the hardships involved in breaking new ground, and those who uphold the ‘White Australia’ policy dread the problems which would inevitably arise from a great coloured incursion. The future will bring its own solution, but the study of the problem brings the uneasy reflection that so great a part of Australia is unsettled and uncultivated, while close by are countries which need colonies for their teeming multitudes of surplus population.
Chapter XLIII
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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand, together with her newly acquired possessions among the Samoan Islands, is nearly twice as large as England and Wales together. The population is nearly 1,500,000, of whom 138,000 live in Wellington, the capital, which is situated on the North Island.
It was first seen by Abel Tasman in 1642, and was called by him after that southern island province of his native land, in which the first part of this geography was written. Some three centuries before it had been discovered by the Polynesian canoe-men, those marvellous mariners of the Pacific whose curiously shaped straw maps were so dependable that they could sail thousands of miles from home and always be sure of finding their way back.
These Polynesian conquerors became the ancestors of the warlike and handsome race of the Maoris, of whom there were some 50,000 left in 1906, and who now number about 67,000. The Maoris are evidently one of the few examples of a native stock which has been able to maintain itself against the white man and to adopt some of the more agreeable virtues of Western civilization without at the same time drinking itself to death. They have given up several of their ancient habits and customs, such as eating their enemies and tattooing their faces, and they send representatives to the New Zealand parliament and build churches which are in every way as unattractive as the chapels constructed by their white masters, all of which bids well for the future, as for as the racial problem is concerned.
During the first quarter of the nineteenth century both the French and the English tried to get hold of these islands by means of their respective missionaries. But in 1833 the Maoris placed themselves under the protection of the English, and in 1839 the English formally took possession of all New Zealand territory.
If the French squadron had been three days earlier, New Zealand would to-day be a French colony like New Caledonia and the Marquesas and so many other islands of the Pacific. In 1840 the islands became a dependency of the Australian colony of New South Wales, and in 1847 an English Crown Colony. In 1901 New Zealand was given a chance to join the Australian Commonwealth, but it declined the honour. Since 1907 it has been an independent dominion with an English governor-general but a representative government of its own.
As for the geological aspect of these two big islands, they have probably never been part of the Australian mainland, for the Tasman Sea which separates them is more than 15,000 feet deep and 1200 miles wide. They are probably the remnants of a high mountain-range which once upon a time formed the western shores of the Pacific. But the changes have been so numerous that it is difficult to state precisely how the present islands came into being. What makes their case even more difficult is the fact that they have so little in common with each other. Whereas the North Island is a tremendously volcanic region (a sort of Yellowstone Park of the Pacific), the South Island, separated from the North Island by the Cook Strait, which is only 20 miles wide, is a replica of Switzerland with a few Norwegian fjords thrown in for good measure.
NEW ZEALAND LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE NORWAY
New Zealand is not in any way tropical. It is as far removed from the Equator as Italy, and enjoys the same sort of climate. This means that it is much more likely to become a permanent European establishment than Australia. All sorts of European fruits, such as peaches and apricots and apples and grapes and oranges, can be cultivated in the valleys, while the mountain sides provide excellent grazing for cattle. A native flax, which must not be confused with the flax grown in Europe, is used for making clothes and mats, and the slow growing trees of the North Island, exported chiefly from Auckland, make excellent timber.
In 1901 New Zealand annexed a number of islands of the Pacific. Among them were the Cook Islands and the Island of Rarotonga, from where, according to Maori belief, New Zealand got its first Polynesian settlers. The Cook Islands are of volcanic origin, but thereupon we leave the volcanic belt and get into the midst of the coral islands.
These are formed by little marine organisms, the Anthozoa, or ‘flower-animals,’ whose assembled skeletons are responsible for the thousands of reefs and islets which dot this part of the Pacific Ocean. These polyps are fussy creatures. They can only live in fresh salt water of a certain temperature. A single frost will kill them. They cannot descend lower than about 600 feet. Whenever we find coral deposits lower than that we know that the bottom of the ocean must have sunk from its original level. But they have been building their little islands for millions of years, and their work is more enduring than that of the best masons. As they depend upon a constant supply of water-in-motion, the polyps who live in the centre of the edifice are apt to die off first. The edges then continue to grow and finally they form a so-called atoll, an island consisting of a narrow ring of solid material with a
circular lagoon in the centre. There is usually a single entrance to such a lagoon, and it is always away from the prevailing winds as the waves on the other side provide the polyps with a more abundant food supply and therefore make them grow fester.
A number of such atolls which grow coconuts and produce copra now belong to New Zealand, and the German share of Samoa was given to the Dominion as a mandate in recognition of the excellent services of the New Zealand troops during the Great War. What they are going to do with it I do not know.
Chapter XLIV
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THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC, WHERE PEOPLE NEITHER TOIL NOR SPIN, BUT LIVE ALL THE SAME
The Atlantic has hardly any islands at all. The Pacific has far too many. The Caroline islands, the Marshall islands, and the Hawaiian islands lie north of the Equator. The others lie south of the Equator. They usually make their appearance in groups. Easter Island, where we have found those mysterious, gigantic stone statues, is an exception. It lies by itself, but it is much nearer to South America than to Australia.
The Pacific islands can be divided into three distinct groups. There are the islands which are undoubtedly the remnants of the vast Australian continent of prehistoric geological times. New Caledonia, the French penal settlement, is an example of this sort of island. Then there are others like the Fiji islands, Samoa, the Hawaiian or Sandwich islands, and the Marquesas, which are of distinct volcanic origin, with high, cone-shaped mountains. Finally there are the ‘low’ coral islands like the New Hebrides.
The Home of Mankind Page 34